Blog – Page 168 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

September 23, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 09/22/2021

feel like the guy the moment after a sledge hammer hits him in the forehead. Or he is hit with two bullets. Silver Bullets. The session started out well enough. I wrote up some warrants early on – neat meet in Zanesville, with the local coming west and ducking into the industrial trackage, 202 coming east (and taking the siding) and Silver Bullet 2 running down the main. That went down like clock work. Out east, 223 was into Calypso and the Harris Glen Local was already climbing the grade. Everything was going as planned. I actually thought maybe we’d […]

September 23, 2021

Backlogged (DOG EAR)

es, usually I’m behind on books and reviewing late. Sometimes I’m saved when I beg a guest writer to blog a book for me. All it takes is a massive slow-read and I’m behind the eight ball again. But that isn’t the problem now. First, I was on vacation for a week, listening to a book a day on CDs while driving. And then I came home to find my computer’s wifi down. I couldn’t fix it for a week since I needed to get a newsletter shipped. And then there was the couple of days the repairs took. And […]

September 26, 2021

OpsLog – TBL – 09/25/2021

ell, it was another run on the Tuscarora today. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to finally run the new coal job since my coal operator is out with medical issues. I posted to the club but got no takers. So it was just the hard-cores – Father and son Brian and Tyler, running with me for a nice and tidy session over two and a half hours. Gotta say this – since we weren’t running balls-to-the-wall like we usually do, Brian was able to study his timetable and actually learn the job. He began to understand why he was doing what […]

September 26, 2021

Ark Royal (Review)

lucked out on this one – was in a used bookstore in Norfolk and came across a block of Ark Royal books, five of the first six, missing the initial copy. Looked like a good series – and self-published too, it seemed – so I bought them. Well, my sister bought them for me, a nice gesture. But I read them. The first book of the Ark Royal series takes place, I dunno, 200 years in the future? Man has reached the stars via tramlines but nations (and navies) still exist. And Ark Royal, an outdated English carrier seventy years […]

September 30, 2021

Getting Old (Dog Ear)

o here was the thing – I have two books I dearly loved and they made movies out of them. Now, the movies took different paths from the books and purist-me, you’d think I’d really object to that sort of thing. But the producers did well, telling a new story with a different meaning. And really, if I had to admit it (and I do, since I’m blogging it), I love them both. So I thought about it for a bit and decided it would make a great posting – yes, pointing out how art can tell two stories with […]

October 3, 2021

The Collapsing Empire (Review)

oor Cardenia, She’s just a nobody living on Hub, the imperial world that controls a network of forty-eight planets connected by the flow, a physics anomaly that allows space ships to travel (slowly) between worlds. Everything is fine and she likes her life. But then the heir to the throne dies in a car racing accident and the current Emperox succumbs to old age. And suddenly, unprepared and maybe a bit unwilling, she it suddenly thrust into the role of the new Emperox. It is a lot to take in for her (as the ruler of an empire for which […]

October 3, 2021

ShowLog – Deland – 10/2/2021

his show had all the earmarks of a disaster. First off the club president was out of town and the tech officer was on an effing boat. I had a few old sweats and a buncha newbies. Day of load, we discovered that the trailer registration was out of date (I fixed that with a couple of quick calls). Day of show, I stopped over at Krispy Kreem to pick up donuts for the crew. Their donut machine was broken and all they had were three dozen donuts that nobody wanted (think about that for a minute – these were […]

October 5, 2021

OpsLog – TBL – 10/4/2021

t was a rough day and a rough night at the club. I worked on the gravel road outside (doing convict labor) and then traced wires in the hideous mess under Zanesville. And after all that, I wanted to run my own session on the Tuscarora, just the coal job testing out the new tally sheets. And I’d use my SW-7 switched to make sure it was all ready for my clinic/ops session next week. And of course, the chip blew. So I can make the bell and horn works, and the engine idles. But you get headlights on both […]

October 7, 2021

Books and movies – a positive comparison (DOG EAR)

eah, usually I dislike the differences between books and movies. Occasionally they get it right (such as The Three Musketeers (1973) which (aside from the casting of Porthos, was dead on)). But usually they get it wrong (as I commented on a recent War of the Worlds remake from a few weeks back HERE). But sometimes they do it right. Now, by right, I don’t mean they do the story line-for-line perfect (that would be to much to ask – Hollywood has a lot of writers who wish to “re-imagine” (a word I despise; I prefer the more correct and […]

October 10, 2021

The Nelson Touch: Ark Royal II (Review)

he Ark Royal series appears to have widespread appeal – at least from what I can tell. Author Christopher Nuttall churned out a bunch of them (seventeen as of 2021). And I can see why they are popular – because they are good. Once again, the titular ship of the series, introduced HERE, is called to duty again. As the only armored ship in the Earth fleets (the rest were only lightly armored death cans), it once more must rise like a phoenix and set sail in finest Star Blazers fashion. This time the idea is a deep penetration raid on […]